Topic: [ANN] The world's first handheld Bitcoin device, the Ellet! (Read 45684 times)

Designing hardware is definitely difficult and can be expensive, and I believe that this project was a bit too broad in its goals (especially as one of the first devices in an unknown market.)

However, there are actually some hardware wallets for Bitcoin in the works right now!!!

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Hardware_wallet

i second the bitcoinwallet as rockbox-plugin motion.

or something like this?
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1655017763/cst-01-the-worlds-thinnest-watch
edit one more:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/597507018/pebble-e-paper-watch-for-iphone-and-android?ref=most-funded

I see your point, paybtc!
Of course I would prefer a "dedicated" wallet hardware.
It seems a lot of effort was put into the Ellet (at least the announcements was made to sound like it). Nevertheless, the original post was on 07.June.2012, 02:14:52 and now it seems to be on halt, precisely because of the hardware..
Maybe Bitcoin is still too small for such a hardware project. Other hardwareprojects are crashing and burning in these very days, in a spectacular way.. ;-)

Hardware random number generator - this might be a KO-criterium , thanks for the hint!

I am sure we will eventually hold a neat dedicated piece of bitcoinhardware in our hands!

Ente

Hi Ente,

This is a very good point, and can be part of a very good solution. Going with a rockbox platform, you would get a great development environment (qemu target simulation) and some reference platforms that work well with Rockbox. I can think of some downsides:

1 - Ability to scale, not tied to a manufacturer. It is very important to be free from a certain product lifecycle. If the vendor stops making your reference platform, you get kinda stuck. Designing it yourself gets you 5-10 years of useful life.
2 - Single reference platform. Rockbox looks like it is very platform-independent. It is nice to keep things simple with a single platform, though that isn't a big issue, just pick one and turn away users that have another one (or get them to port it.) Trying to debug dozens of USB HID implementations can be tedious.
3 - Crypto-specific requirements. It is pretty important to have a good hardware random number generator on board, to create a strong private key and to limit some attacks.

Most importantly,

4 - Developing hardware is kick ass, and has a reasonably low barrier to entry. Even if you will never get to the quantities that would make your device cheaper than an MP3 device, it is still a great experience and solves all of the above problems. You also get a nice development environment, more security, and can optimize for Bitcoin-specific use cases. There is a strong open-source mentality around Bitcoin, and using open hardware fits better than an off-the-shelf retrofit.

My 2 mBTC. Having Bitcoin wallet software integrated on top of Rockbox would still be sweet.

The future looks great 

I think it was suggested before, somewhere.
It seems like hardware is the main moneyburner here.

Why invent it again?
Use some small device with a bit cpu power, a good enough display, battery, usb connection and buttons.
Sounds familiar?
--> MP3 Player <--

Now I didn't research into this much. However, I found http://www.rockbox.org/ which replaces the stock firmware on a lot of mp3 players. We may use it directly, or parts of it, or just use it as a pointer to see which mp3 players are usable.

How about "sandisk clip":


Or "SanDisk Sansa c200":


edit:
even much more simple and surely cheaper, not based on rockbox:
http://www.s1mp3.org/en/docs_userguide.php

I would prefer one of the first two players..

I would use one of those. And buy a reprogrammed one, or maybe do it myself and send money in the direction of the firmware programmers.

Now these are strictly offline. No Paypal possible on these, as someone shouted on the original vapor-Ellet.. But good enough to sign transactions, for sure!

So, why are people burning truckloads of money on re-inventing the hardware? It's all in the software anyway!

Ente

I lol'ed

Pay back your debts, then you can re-join the community..

GUYS! IT'S HERE!

Hardware is a tough industry as I've come to learn. You don't get anywhere in hardware without burning money. The question then is if you're able to replenish it or not. I can safely say that as an open source project, I have no confidence in the bitcoin community's ability to support its large overhead for manufacturing as there just isn't a large enough market for such a device.

That said, I have come to grow fond of the principles of open source since coming to the Bitcoin community and I hope to appreciate it even moreso as I work on open source projects this year. Here's to broader minds and strokes in 2013.

Open source is not about allowing others to steal ideas, it's to encourage it. Closed source is anathema to Bitcoin. We all benefit by sharing ideas to make Bitcoin adaption grow. It would be nice to see what you had developed.

Thank you for being there for the earlier prototypes. It was fun. The project itself has stalled for funding reasons (it costs about $1 million to get even 50,000 of them produced). We thought about a kickstarter or indiegogo campaign, but in shopping around for distributors we found that most of them were scammers trying to steal our ideas. For the moment, we're taking our time and watching the market for interest (as we should have done in the first place). Slush, who was there in the beginning of the Ellet's development for a few months has also started making a physical wallet device. Check his out too!

No idea if this is dead here. Even if, there will eventually be such a device.
Over here we are talking about creating visual representations of adresses:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/using-squares-circles-and-triangles-with-colours-to-represent-bitcoin-addresses-137406

What for? To easily compare an adress on my computer with the one the ellet has received!

Ente

Twas a fun project to work on indeed.

Wow pretty awesome stuff!!

This project is Matthew-ed.

This project is probably dead.

Subbed.

A)I believe I have missed something. I've read through 6 pages of post. I don't see anywhere where it verifies the person sending you the bitcoins actually has them. Can I make a copy of my wallet at one point in time, clone it to a second SDCARD, put it on 2 ellets and send money to 2 people? It doesn't store the blockchain. So if you are in a place with no wireless and no cellular, I can't possibly see how you can't clone your wallet and spend twice. I mean hell, someone can find a way to open one, kill the antennae, and just walk around spending a bucket load of money at say a trade convention. Lets go a step further. Find the spectrum this uses and kill it with a jammer. You could walk around all day just going "oh look, no signal here. Have 30 bucks" and disappear into the shadows.

B) As others said. The name isn't very good, but whatever. It doesn't flow if you ask me.

C) This will be hacked. Saying it can't, just makes you a bigger target. This deals with money, you already have a large mark on your back. See: iphone, onstar, etc

D) I'd say an app I can put on any phone I'm already I'm carrying in my pocket would be a huge plus. I'm not opposed to another device, depending on the size. When you carry a gun in one pocket, earbuds,gum,cellphone in another and a wallet in one back pocket, you really don't wan't to have leave an implant in the other cheek.

E) If you can get it to the right size and display the time, this would make a great watch replacement. Heck, I still might build a strap to keep it on my wrist, no worries about theft under a long shirt then.

EDIT:F) Accept credit cards. I got a square up device a bit ago. This is awesome for me when I'm at shows. Instant payment that everyone already has, especially when they don't carry around a few $100 in cash. As for the fee, I add it to their total.

Sources say (who wish to remain non-existent) that Adele will be at the launch and has a theme song. I think I heard this on Faux News. *facepie*